What Are Drugs?

Drugs are chemical compounds or substances that affect the mental and physical state of a person. These may be beneficial or harmful for the person. There is large variety of drugs used in medical fields. These drugs are used as medications in treating and preventing ailments. This is the positive aspect of the drugs.

People take them according to the doctor’s prescription for curing their disease. But these medicines may also be harmful if taken in large quantity, because they all are drugs. Some drugs may be used as stimulant and some as sedative.

But some people take drugs for enjoyment. They don’t care whether they are harmful or even life threatening for them.

These drugs are harmful for their life even sometimes it may leads to death due to overdose. These drugs are known as recreational drugs. A person who takes these recreational drugs knows that they are harmful for him but he don’t care of it.

He wants to enjoy that hypnotic trance. People take these recreational drugs due to several reasons:

To get rid of boredom.

Don’t want to face difficulty in their life.

Want to forget everything.

It makes them feel stronger.

Just for taste.

Want to see its action on their body.

For a relaxed mind etc.

A drug directly affects your sensations and makes you stupor, unresponsive and also affects your memory. Activity of brain slows down because of drugs due to which a man starts loosing his memory, image becomes blurred, even he is not aware of what is going on his surrounding.

He wants to remember the things but he can’t. This hypnotic trance is like a pause of his life.

Drugs are of two types- natural and synthetic drugs. Natural drugs are found in nature from plants and trees such as opium and synthetic drugs are made in the laboratory by the chemical reactions.

Medicines are legal drugs recommended by the doctors but illegal drugs are dangerous for one’s life.

These illegal drugs may severely damage one’s brain. Some of the illegal drugs are heroin, Cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana etc. Some of the drugs are harmful but they are not illegal such as alcohol, tobacco etc.

Not only adult even teens and kids used these illegal drugs to become cool and happening in front of their friends. This coolness is no more because they become addicted to the drugs.

If a person taking these drugs then you can noticed them with the symptoms enumerated below:

Red eyes

Unresponsive nature

sleepiness

Weight loss or weight gain

Continuous cough

Become aggressive and moody etc.

Since drugs directly affect the physical and mental state of the person they are also called as psychoactive drugs. Both medicines and recreational drugs are psychoactive drugs. Psychoactive drugs are categorized under three groups:

Stimulants: stimulants enhance the working of central nervous system. These stimulants activate the alert zone of the person. He feels more alert and arouse. Some of the stimulants are cocaine, caffeine, ecstasy, nicotine, methamphetamines etc.

Depressants: depressants decrease the working of central nervous system. Person feels conscious and also the heart rate and breathing slows down. Some of the depressants are heroin, alcohol, benzodiazepines, and tranquilizers etc.

Hallucinogens: hallucinogen drugs forms an imaging world around the person. He feels many things around himself which are not present there. Some of the hallucinogens are LSD, cannabis, ecstasy etc.

Taking drug for longer time also increase the tolerance power of the person. He becomes resist to small quantity of drug. And he has to take large quantity of drugs because small quantity does not induce hypnotic trance.

For that reason, a person also uses a large number of drugs at a time. And we call this polydrug use.

List of drugs- harmful and dangerous

The degree of effectiveness defines the harmful and danger nature of the drug. Illegal drugs are most harmful and dangerous drugs in the world. But sometimes taking legal drugs in excess amount without any prescription also harm the people.

There is a wide variety of harmful and dangerous drugs. Some of the dangerous and harmful drugs are listed below:

Heroin: Heroin is diacetylmorphine and it is a derivation of morphine alkaloid that is found in opium. It is more potent than opium. Heroin is bitter in taste and white in appearance in its pure state. Another name of heroin is H, brown sugar, smack, horse, junk, skag, black tar. It can be sniffed, smoked or even injected in the body. It affects central nervous system, causes liver complications and also infections. About 890 (approx) deaths are estimated in a year due to heroin consumption.

Cocaine: it is type of stimulants that stimulate the activity of the central nervous system. There is always a chance of cardiac arrest in the person. And he may also face stroke due to its use. Cocaine kills 230 (approx) people in a year. This number has been increased since 2008.

Tobacco: it acts as a strong sedative due to its strong addictive component nicotine. Tobacco may leads to myocardium diseases, cancer, and respiratory diseases. tobacco kills 1 lakh people every year.

Ketamine: It categorized under the hallucinogenic type of drugs. It affects the memory of the person and also causes the urinary tract problems.

Cannabis: it is also categorized under the hallucinogenic drugs that form imaging world around the person. It is also known as hemp, pot, weed, hashish, reefer, ganja, grass and marijuana. Main content in cannabis that is responsible for the psychoactive effect is THC (delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol). It affects the activity of brain. A person feels difficulty in doing his work. It also increases the pulse rate, increased appetite, loss of coordination etc.

Barbiturates: these barbiturates are generally used as an anesthesia in operations. It is also used in narcotic test that is done in legal cases to put the accused in the hypnotic phase, so that he may confess his crime. But it heavy dose may put the person in coma or may even leads to death.

Benzodiazepines: it is used in the treatment of insomniac and anxious condition. You may become addict due to its long time use. It causes nausea, drowsiness. Dizziness and increases pulse rate.

Buprenorphine: it may used in acute pain. It is also used as an alternative for quitting heroin. Overdose may leads to death. It causes dizziness, nausea, vomiting.

Amphetamines: it is categorized under the stimulants and helps in reducing weakness and hunger. It may cause stroke, increase in blood pressure and a person becomes addict if takes its excess amount.

LSD: this hallucinogenic drug is prepared by the German scientist. However, its degree of harm has not yet been known, but it is believed that it may increase the pulse rate and blood pressure.

Methylphenidate

Khat

Ecstasy

Poppers

GHB

Anabolic steroids

Solvents

street methadone

Alcohol

Acetylfentanyl

Para- methoxymethylamphetamine (PPMA)

Phenazepam

MT- 45 and many more.

Drugs usage and side effects

People take drugs due to several reasons:

People think that drugs will treat their bipolar disorder, mental disorder and depression which are totally wrong; in fact they enhance the complications. A person may feel relieved for a short time only.

Because their friends and relatives are taking it, so teens and kids also want to experience it.

Some people fade up with their life and they think drug will help them.

They think drugs are best stress reliever.

Some people think that if a doctor prescribed particular drugs for someone with the same disease he has then he thought that it will also work for him.

Some people take it for forgetting the past which may be painful for them.

Some people think that they will stay fit due to consumption of drugs.

Side effects of drugs: whatever the reason might be but one should be well aware of the side effects of drugs. Side effects are unpredictable results of the drug usage. Here are the side effects of some drugs:

Abacavir sulfate and lamivudine– this drug helps in preventing the reproduction of HIV in the body but it may cause a number of side effects in the patient’s body due to its overdose such as sore throat, fatigue, anemia, muscle weakness, nerve disease, seizure, hair loss etc.

When a person becomes addict to the drugs then this stage is called as physical dependency. If he does not take drugs then he will feel unwell. He has to take that drugs, he is totally depend on it. So if a person wants to get rid of it then drug rehabilitation or drug counseling may help him in doing so.

However, recovery from addiction is little difficult but not impossible. First successful attempt towards your recovery is that you really want to treat this. Once you decided so then you can get help through rehabilitation centre.

This rehabilitation is like your journey from addicted person to a healthy person. It needs little hard work and it really works. It provides a new life to the person. In rehabilitation, a person has to follow some steps but this step varies from the degree of the addiction.

This drug counseling has following steps:

Intake: in this step, rehab centre is chosen by the person. He may choose whether a particular centre is good for his treatment or not. Expert also diagnosed the person if he can get the right treatment for his addictions.
Also the expert decided the type of treatment he required according to his severity of addiction. A person has to think all the things that a rehab may change his behavior or the mental state.

Detox: detoxification is generally requiring in all type of rehabilitation. In this step, drug is totally removed from the person’s body. It may also require some kinds of medications that will help in detoxification. These medications may help in combating the withdrawal symptoms.

This detox process is given the person according to his physical condition, level of addiction in the body. Detox is an important step and little dangerous for one’s life. So it can always be done in rehab centre only.

A person has to face some withdrawal symptoms such as diarrhea, nausea, headaches, seizures, stroke etc. Medicines that are used during detoxification are buprenorphine, methadone, benzodiazepines, barbiturates etc.

Rehab: after detoxification, treatment continuous to rehabilitation. This is the step where the root causes that are responsible for the addiction of the patient are determined by the experts. These reasons may help expert in its effective treatment. Expert provide other activities to the person so that he loss his focus from the drugs. Person also gets full support from his family that helps him in early recovery.

Recovery: recovery is an ongoing process. Even after completion of treatment, person also goes through the recovery phase. Sometimes, recovery may be life long. After the treatment a person may consult a counselor for his further recovery.
Also many rehab centres provide further treatments for ongoing recovery. With this recovery, a person again leads toward his normal and sober life.